The Black Poodle, and Other Tales

'You leave that to me. I've an idea, something much better than your silly tea-parties.'

'Why doesn't he tell that child to go?' thought Ethelinda, 'we don't want her!'

'Now listen, Winifred,' said Archie: 'this is the game. You're a beautiful queen (only do sit up and take that finger out of your mouth – queens don't do that). Well, and I'm the king, and this is your maid of honour, the beautiful Lady Ethelinda, see?'

'Go on, Archie; I see,' cried Winifred; 'and I like it so far.'

'I think I ought to have been the queen!' said Ethelinda to herself.

'Well, now,' said the boy, 'I'll tell you something. This maid of honour of yours doesn't like you (don't say she does, now; I'm telling this, and I know). You watch her carefully. Can't you see a sort of look in her face as if she didn't think much of you?'

'How clever he is,' thought Ethelinda; 'he knows exactly how I feel!'

'Do you really think it's that, Archie?' said Winifred; 'it's just what I was afraid of before you came in.'

'That's it. Look out for a kind of glare in her eye when I pay you any attention. (How does Your Majesty do? Well, I hope.) There, didn't you see it? Well, that's jealousy, that is. She hates you like anything!'

'I'm sure she doesn't, then,' protested Winifred.

'Oh, well, if you know better than I do, you can finish it for yourself. I'm going.'

'No, no; do stay. I like it. I'll be good after this!'

'Don't you interrupt again, then. Now the real truth is that she'd like to be queen instead of you; she's ambitious, you know – that's what's the matter with her. And so she's got it into her head that if you were only out of the way, I should ask her to be the next queen!'

Winifred could not say a word, she was so overcome by the idea of her doll's unkindness; and Archie took Ethelinda by the waist and brought her near her royal mistress as he said: 'Now you'll see how artful she is; she's coming to ask you if she may go out. Listen. "Please, Your Gracious Majesty, may I go out for a little while?"'

'This is even better than if I spoke myself,' Ethelinda thought; 'he can talk for me, and I do believe I'm going to be quite wicked presently.'

'Am I to speak to her, Archie?' Winifred asked, feeling a little nervous.

'Of course you are. Go on; don't be silly; give her leave.'

'Certainly, Ethelinda, if you wish it,' replied Winifred, with a happy recollection of her mother's manner on somewhat similar occasions, 'but I should like you to be in to prayers.'

'A maid of honour isn't the same as a housemaid, you know,' said Archie; 'but never mind – she's off. You don't see where she goes, of course.'

'Yes I do,' said Winifred.

'Ah, but not in the game; nobody does. She goes to the apothecary's – here's the apothecary.' And he caught hold of the jester, who thought helplessly, 'I'm being brought into it now; I wish he'd let me alone – I don't like it!' 'Well, so she says, "Oh, if you please, Mr. Apothecary, I want some arsenic to kill the royal blackbeetles with; not much – a pound or two will be plenty." So he takes down a jar (here Archie got up and fetched a big bottle of citrate of magnesia from a cupboard), 'and he weighs it out, and wraps it up, and gives it to her. And he says, "You'll mind and be very careful with it, my lady. The dose is one pinch in a teaspoonful of treacle to each blackbeetle, the last thing at night; but it oughtn't to be left about in places." And so Lady Ethelinda takes it home and hides it.'

'I've bought some poison now,' thought Ethelinda, immensely delighted, 'I am a wicked doll! How convenient it is to have it all done for one like this! I do hope he's going to make me give Winifred some of that stuff, to get her out of the way, and have the romance all to our two selves.'

'Now you and I,' Archie continued, 'haven't the least idea of all this. But one day, the Court jester ('I was an apothecary just now,' thought the jester; 'it's really very confusing!') – the Court jester comes up, looking very grave, and sneaks of her. The reason of that is that he's angry with her because she never will have anything to do with him, and he says that he's seen her folding up a powder in paper and writing on it, and he thought I ought to be told about it.' ('This is awful,' thought the jester. 'What will Ethelinda think of me for telling tales? and what has come to Ethelinda? It's all that miserable Sausage-Glutton's doing – and I can't help myself!')

'Well, I'm very much surprised of course,' said Archie; 'any king would be – but I wait, and one day, when she has gone out for a holiday, the jester and I go to her desk and break it open.'

'Oh, Archie,' objected the poor little Queen in despair, 'isn't that rather mean of you?'

'Now look here, Winnie, I can't have this sort of thing every minute. For a gentleman, it might be rather mean, perhaps, but then I'm a king, and I've got a right to do it, and it's all for your sake, too – so you can't say anything. Besides, it's the jester does it; I only look on. Well, and by-and-by,' said Archie, as he scribbled something laboriously on a piece of paper, 'by-and-by he finds this!'

And with imposing gravity he handed Winifred a folded paper, on which she read with real terror and grief the alarming words – 'Poisin for the Queen!'

'There, what do you think of that?' he asked triumphantly; 'looks bad, doesn't it?'

'Perhaps,' suggested the Queen feebly, 'perhaps it was only in fun?'

'Fun – there's not much fun about her! Now the guard' (here he used the bewildered jester once more) 'arrests her. Do you want to ask the prisoner any questions? – you can if you like.'

'You – you didn't mean to poison me really, did you, Ethelinda dear?' said Winifred, who was taking it all very seriously, as she took most things. 'Archie, do make her say something!'

'Why can't you answer when the Queen asks you a question, eh?' demanded Archie. 'No, she won't say a word; she'll only grin at you; you see she's quite hardened. There's only one thing that would make her confess,' he added cautiously, aware that he was on rather delicate ground, 'and that's the torture. I could make a beautiful rack, Winnie, if you didn't mind?'

'Whatever she's done,' said the Queen, firmly, 'I'm not going to have her tortured! And I believe she's sorry inside and wants me to forgive her!'

'Then why doesn't she say so?' said Archie. 'No, no, Winnie. Look here, this is a serious thing, you know; it won't do to pass it over; it's high treason, and she'll have to be tried.'

'But I don't want her tried,' said Winifred.

'Oh, very well then; I had better go downstairs again and read. The best part was all coming, but if you don't care, I'm sure I don't!'

'Little idiot!' thought Ethelinda angrily, 'she'll spoil the whole thing; every heroine has to be tried!'

But Winnie gave in, as she usually did, to Archie. 'Well, then, she shall be tried if you really think she ought to be, Archie; it won't hurt her though, will it?'

'Of course it won't; it's all right. Now for the trial: here's the court, and here's a place for the judge' (he built it all up with books and bricks as he spoke); 'here's the dock – stick Lady What's-her-name inside – that's it. We must do without a jury, but I suppose we ought to have a judge; oh, this fellow will do for judge!'

And he seized the jester and raised him to the Bench at once. The jester was more puzzled than ever. 'Now I'm a judge,' he thought, 'I shall have to try her; but I'm glad of it – I'll let her off!'

But unluckily he very soon found that he had no voice at all in the matter, except what Archie chose to lend him.

'Oh, but Archie,' said Winifred, who was determined to defeat the ends of justice if she possibly could, 'can a jester be a judge?'

'Why not?' said Archie; 'judges make jokes sometimes – I've heard papa say so, and he's a barrister, and ought to know.'

'But this one doesn't make real jokes!' persisted Winifred.

'Who asked him to? Judges are not obliged to make jokes, Winnie. I believe you are trying to get her off, but I'm going to see justice done, I tell you. So now then, Lady Ethelinda, you are charged with high treason and trying to poison Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Winifred Gladys Robertson, by putting arsenic in Her Majesty's tea. Guilty or not guilty! Speak up!'

'Not guilty!' put in Winifred quickly, thinking that would settle the whole trial comfortably. 'There, Archie, you can't say she didn't speak that time!'

'Now, you have done it!' Archie said triumphantly. 'If she'd confessed, we might have shown mercy. Now we shall have to prove it, and if we do I'm sorry for her, that's all!'

'If she says "Guilty, and she won't do it again!"' suggested Winifred.

'It's too late for that now,' said Archie, who was not going to have his trial cut short in that way: 'no, we must prove it.'

'But how are you going to prove it?'

'You wait. I've been in court once or twice with papa, and seen him prove all sorts of things. First, we must have in the fellow who sold the poison – the apothecary, you know. Oh, I say, though, I forgot that – he's the judge; that won't do!'

'Then you can't prove it after all – I'm so glad!' cried the Queen, with her eyes sparkling.

'One would think you rather liked being poisoned,' said Archie, in an offended tone.

'I like magnesia, and it isn't poison, really – it's medicine.'

'It isn't magnesia now; it's arsenic; and she shan't get off like this. I'll call the apothecary's young man, he'll prove it (this brick is the apothecary's young man). There, he says it's all right; she did it right enough. Now for the sentence! (put a penwiper on the judge's head, will you, Winnie; it's solemner).'

'What's a sentence?' asked Winifred, much disturbed at these ill-omened arrangements.

'You'll see; this is the judge talking now: "Lady Ethelinda, you've been found guilty of very bad conduct; you've put arsenic in your beloved Queen's tea!"'

'Why, I haven't had tea yet!' protested the Sovereign.

"Her Majesty is respectfully ordered not to interrupt the judge when he's summing up; it puts him out. Well, as I was saying, Lady Ethelinda, I'm sorry to tell you that we shall have to cut your head off!"'

'What have I done?' thought the jester; 'she'll think I'm in earnest; she'll never forgive me!'

But Ethelinda was perfectly delighted, for not one of her heroines had ever been in such a romantic position as this. 'And of course,' she thought, 'it will all come right in the end; it always does.'

Winifred, however, was terrified by the sternness of the court: 'Archie,' she cried, 'she mustn't have her head cut off.'

'It will be all right, Winnie, if you will only leave it to me and not interfere. You promised not to interrupt, and yet you will keep on doing it!'

Archie's head was full of executions just then, for he had been reading 'The Tower of London;' he had been artfully leading up to an execution from the very first, and he meant to have his own way.

But first he amused himself by working upon Winifred's feelings, which was a bad habit of his on these occasions. To do him justice, he did not know how keenly she felt things, and how soon she forgot it was only pretence; it flattered him to see how easily he could make Winifred cry about nothing, and he never guessed what real pain he was giving her.

'Winnie,' he began very dolefully, 'she's in prison now, languishing in her prison cell, and do you know, I rather think her heart's beginning to soften a little: she wants you to come and see her. You won't refuse her last request, Winnie, will you?'

'As if I could!' cried Winifred, full of the tenderest compassion.

'Very well then; this is the last meeting. "My dear kind mistress" (it's Ethelinda speaking to you now), "that I once loved so dearly in the happy days when I was innocent and good, I couldn't die till I had asked you to forgive me. Let your poor wicked maid-of-honour kiss your hand just once more as she used to do; tell her you forgive her about that arsenic." Now then, Winnie!'

'I – I can't, Archie!' sobbed Winifred, quite melted by this pathetic appeal.

'If you don't, she'll think you're angry still, and won't forgive her,' said Archie. 'Just you listen; this is her now: "Won't you say one little word, Your Majesty; you might as well. When I'm gone and mouldering away in my felon's grave it will be too late then, and you'll be sorry. It's the last thing I shall ever ask you!"'

'Oh, Ethelinda, darling, don't!' implored her Queen; 'don't go on talking in that dreadful way; I can't bear it. Archie, I must forgive her now!'

'Oh yes, forgive her,' he said with approval; 'queens shouldn't sulk or bear malice.'

'It's all right,' said Winifred briskly, as she dried her eyes; 'she's quite good again. Now let's play at something not quite so horrid!'

'When we've done with this, we will; but it isn't half over yet; there's all the execution to come. It's the fatal day now, the dismal scaffold is erected' (here he made a rough platform and a neat little block with the books), 'the sheriff is mounting guard over it' (and Archie propped up the unfortunate jester against a workbox so that he overlooked the scaffold); 'the trembling criminal is brought out amidst the groans of the populace (groan, Winnie, can't you?)'

'I shan't groan,' said Winnie, rebelliously; 'I'm a queen, not a populace. Archie, you won't really cut off her head, will you?'

'Don't be a little duffer,' said he; 'the end is to be a surprise, so I can't tell you what it is till it comes. You've heard of pardons arriving just in time, haven't you? Very well then. Only I don't say one will arrive here, you know, I only say, wait!'

'And now,' he went on, 'I'm not the King any longer, I'm the headsman; and – and I say, Winnie, perhaps you'd better hide your face now; a queen wouldn't look on at the execution, really; at least a nice queen wouldn't!'

So Winifred hid her face in her hands obediently, very glad to be spared even the pretence of an execution, and earnestly wishing Archie was near the end of this uncomfortable game.

But Archie was just beginning to enjoy himself: 'The wretched woman,' he announced with immense unction, 'is led tottering to the block, and then the headsman, very respectfully, cuts off some of her beautiful golden hair, so that it shouldn't get in his way.'

At this point I am sorry to say that Archie, in the wish to have everything as real as possible, actually did snip off a good part of Ethelinda's flossy curls. Luckily for him, his cousin was too conscientious and unsuspecting to peep through her fingers, and never imagined that the scissors she heard were really cutting anything – she even kept her eyes shut while Archie hunted about the room for something, which he found out at last, and which was a sword in a red tin scabbard.

Till then Archie was not quite sure what he really meant to do; at first he had fancied that it would be enough for him just to touch Ethelinda lightly with the sword, but now (whether the idea had been put in his head by the Sausage Glutton, or whether it had been there somewhere all the time) he began to think how easily the sharp blade would cleave Ethelinda's soft wax neck, and how he could hold up the severed head by the hair, just like the executioner in the pictures, and say solemnly, 'This is the head of a traitress!'

He knew of course that it would get him into terrible trouble, and he ought to have known that it would be mean and cowardly of him to take advantage of his poor little cousin's trust in him to deceive her.

But he did not stop to think of that; the temptation was too strong for him; he had gone so far in cutting off her hair that he might just as well cut off her head too.

So that presently Ethelinda found herself lying helpless, with her hands tied behind her, and her close-cropped head placed on a thick book, while Archie stood over her with a cruel gleam in his eyes, and flourished a flashing sword.

'I ought to be masked though,' he said suddenly, 'or I might be recognised – executioners had to be masked. I'll tie a handkerchief over my eyes and that will have to do.'

And when he had done this, he began to measure the distance with his eye, and to make some trial cuts to be quite sure of his aim, for he meant to get the utmost possible enjoyment out of it.

Ethelinda began to be terribly frightened. Being a heroine was not nearly so pleasant as she had expected. It had cost her most of her beautiful hair already: was it going to cost her her head as well?

Too late, she began to see how foolish she had been, and that even make-believe tea-parties were better than this. She longed to be held safe in tender-hearted little Winifred's arms.

But Winifred's eyes were shut tight, and would not be opened till – till all was over. Ethelinda could not move, could not cry out to her, she was quite helpless, and all the time the wicked old man on the clock went on steadily swallowing sausage after sausage, as if he had nothing at all to do with it!

The jester was even more alarmed for Ethelinda than she was herself; he was quite certain that Winifred was being wickedly deceived, and that the pardon so cunningly suggested would never come.

In another minute this dainty little lady, with the sweet blue eyes and disdainful smile, would be gone from him for ever; and there was no hope for her, – none!

And the bitterest thing about it was, that, although he was a great deal confused, as he very well might be, as to how it had all come about, he knew that in some way, he himself had taken part (or rather several parts) in bringing her to this shameful end, and the poor jester, innocent as he was, fancied that her big eyes had a calm scorn and reproach in them as she looked up at him sideways from the block.

'What shall I do without her?' he thought; 'how can I bear it. Ah, I ought to be lying there – not she. I wish I could take her place!'

All this time Archie had been lingering – he lingered so long that Winifred lost all patience. 'Do make haste, Archie,' she said, with a little shudder that shook the table. 'I can't bear it much longer; I shall have to open my eyes!'

'It was only the mask got in my way,' he said. 'Now I'm ready. One, two, three!'

And then there was a whistling swishing sound, followed by a heavy thud, and a flop.

After that Archie very prudently made for the door. 'I – I couldn't help it, really, Winnie,' he stammered, as she put her hands down with relief and looked about, rather dazzled at first by the sudden light. 'I'll save up and buy you another twice as pretty. And you know you said Ethelinda didn't seem to care about you!'

'Stop, Archie, what do you mean? Did you think you'd cut her head off really!'

'Haven't I?' said Archie, stupidly. 'I cut something's head off; I saw it go!'

'Then you did mean it! And, oh, it's the jester! I wouldn't have minded it so much, if you hadn't meant it for Ethelinda! And, Archie, you cruel, bad boy – you've cut – cut all her beautiful hair off, and I sat here and let you! She's not pretty at all now – it's a shame, it is a shame!'

Ethelinda had had a wonderful escape, and this is how it had happened:

The jester had been so anxious about Ethelinda that he had forgotten all about the fairy, and how she had granted him his very next wish; but she, being a fairy, had to remember it. If he had only thought of it, it would have been just as easy to wish Ethelinda safe without any harm coming to himself, but he had wished 'to take her place,' and the fairy, whether she liked it or not, was obliged to keep her promise.

So the little shake which Winifred had given the table was enough to make Ethelinda roll quietly over the edge of the platform, and the jester, who never was very firm on his legs, fall forward on his face the next moment, exactly where she had lain – and either the fairy or the handkerchief over his face prevented Archie from finding out the exchange in time.

Archie tried to defend himself: 'I think she looks better with her hair cut short,' he said; 'lots of girls wear it like that. And, don't you see, Winnie, this has been a plot got up by the jester; Ethelinda was innocent all the time, and he's just nicely caught in his own trap… That – that's the surprise!'

'I don't believe you one bit!' said Winifred. 'You had no business to cut even my jester's head off, but you meant to do much worse! I won't play with you any more, and I shan't forgive you till the very day you go back to school!'

'But, Winnie,' protested Archie, looking rather sheepish and ashamed of himself.

'Go away directly,' said Winnie, stamping her foot; 'I don't want to listen; leave me alone!'

So Archie went, not sorry, now, that an accident had kept him from doing his worst, and feeling tolerably certain that he would be able to make his cousin relent long before the time she had fixed, while Winifred, left to herself again, was so absorbed in sobbing over Ethelinda's sad disfigurement, that she quite forgot to pick up the split halves of the jester's head which were lying on the nursery floor.

That night Ethelinda had the chest of drawers all to herself, and the old Sausage Glutton grinned savagely at her from the mantelpiece, for he was disappointed at the way in which his plans had turned out.

'Good evening,' he began, with one of his nastiest sneers. 'And how are you after your little romance, eh? Master Archie very nearly had your pretty little empty head off – but of course I couldn't allow that. I hope you enjoyed yourself?'

'I did at first,' said Ethelinda; 'I got frightened afterwards, when I thought it wasn't going to end at all nicely. But did you notice how very wickedly that dreadful jester behaved to me – it will be a warning to me against associating with such persons in future, and I assure you that there was something about him that made me shudder from the very first! I have heard terrible things about the dolls in the Lowther Arcade, and what can you expect at such prices? Well, he's rewarded for his crimes, and that's a comfort to think of – but it has all upset me very much indeed, and I don't want any more romance – it does shorten the hair so!'

The Dutch fairy doll heard her and was very angry, for she knew of course why the jester had come to a tragic ending.

'Shall I tell her now, and make her ashamed and sorry – would she believe me? would she care? Perhaps not, but I must speak out some time – only I had better wait till the clock has stopped. I can't bear her to talk about that poor jester in this way.'

But it really did not matter to the jester, who could hear or feel nothing any more – for they had thrown him into the dustbin, where, unless the dustcart has called since, he is lying still.